In the era of mobile Internet, operators are continuously seeking for a technical manner of exposing a teleservice capability and integrating the teleservice capability into an Internet service, to develop a new service mode and a source of revenue.
In a communications network that includes a third-party application server and a service capability exposure function SCEF, a 3GPP network device usually uses the service capability exposure function SCEF to securely provide a third-party application server with a key function device for service capability exposure in a 3GPP communications network.
According to a current standard, the third-party application identifies UE by using an external identity (External identity). However, a correspondence between the external identity and a UE identity IMSI/MSISDN needs to be subscribed in an HSS for the identity. Therefore, when the third-party application performs a monitoring event, a third-party application SCS/AS requests network information from a related 3GPP device by using the SCEF, and a 3GPP network element device determines UE identity information (an IMSI/MSISDN value) based on the subscribed correspondence, to obtain network information that is in a 3GPP network and that is of a UE corresponding to the UE identity information.
Through research on the prior art, the inventor of this application finds that the prior art has the following problems:
In the prior art, a correspondence between an external identity information and an IMSI/MSISDN needs to be subscribed in a subscription database in advance for each UE. Consequently, a subscription process is complex, maintenance is inconvenient when a data volume is large, and load of the subscription database is increased.